


Kylo Bear

by how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, One Shot, One-Shot, Oneshot, Reylo - Freeform, Tumblr, Writing Prompt, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 15:43:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13437984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off/pseuds/how_do_i_turn_this_thing_off
Summary: From this prompt by @helpilikereylo on tumblr:listen listen what if Rey got a little Kylo Bear as a sort of secret santa present from someone?She hates it at first, of course, it’s designed to look just like him. But for some reason she can’t let it go. At first she contemplates using it for force practice, maybe she could pretend it’s him.But overtime she finds that it’s softness is nice to cuddle with at night. It hugs against her perfectly and the texture in his arms is calming. No one needs to know what she does with the bear. It’s hers after all.Kylo finds out in some way shape or form and promptly freaks out.First published on tumblr @how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off





	Kylo Bear

   Porgs.  They were everywhere, just… just everywhere.  And with what was left of the entire Resistance crammed onto the Millennium Falcon porg nests were being discovered in the drawers, behind the seats, literally in the walls.  Normally it would have been mayhem but the battle-worn Rebels were too exhausted to care, curling up wherever they could find room whether or not they had to share it with a few furry neighbors.

   Poe volunteered to take the pilot’s chair so Chewie could clear out some extra space and Rey volunteered to help the Wookie do it, since she seemed to be the only member of the Rebellion not dead on her feet.  Truth be told her mind was whirling, and the last thing she needed was to be alone with her thoughts right now.  There was plenty to distract her; the Falcon had more nooks and crannies than it seemed it should, and plenty of leftover wares stowed away from smuggling misadventures gone by.  Chewie showed her a couple hidden compartments and left her to try and cram the contents of three separate hidey-holes into one.  The going was slow, and dusty, but it kept her at least marginally occupied.

   Ben was still there, in the back of her mind, like the hum of an electrical machine whirring away in the distance while she worked. She’d caught a glimpse of him just before they’d left Crait but not since, which was a relief since that was the last thing she needed right now.  Rey pulled a metal box out from behind two panels and the bottom fell ajar, dirty with rust, peeling away at the seams. Something furry fell on her foot and for a moment she thought it was another porg but then she saw the button eyes and embroidered nose.

   Forgetting all about her work she propped the defective box on the nearest clear surface and picked the object up, wiping off some dust as she felt delight sweep through her.  It was unmistakably a stuffed Wookie, complete with belt and what seemed to be very authentic Wookie hair.

   “Chewie, is this you?” Rey called, straightening up with a grin and looking for him.  She’d thought he was down the hall from her but he seemed to have moved on, and now there was nothing there but some hastily dumped Resistance gear.  She shrugged, setting the doll aside to show him later as she tried to pick up the box again. Another doll fell out, a doll with black hair and a white bathrobe.

   She reached for it without thinking, an automatic tug with the Force helping her catch it before it hit the ground, before her brain caught up with her hands.  The next moment she’d turned it over and found herself holding Kylo Ren.

   She dropped both the doll and the box, starting away as though she’d been burned, just barely managing to turn her reflexive cry of shock into a breathless gasp.  Kylo stared up at her from the floor– no, not Kylo, Ben, wearing a Jedi robe identical to the one Luke had worn, his black hair made of curly yarn, his button eyes and embroidered red smile staring up at her.  Hanging from the belt of his miniature uniform a leftover broken soldering rod had been made to look like a silver lightsaber hilt, painted with a dab of blue on the end.

   It was like a kick to the gut and she couldn’t seem to look away no matter how wrenching it was to see this.  Ben Solo, as he should have been, as his family had thought he was going to be.  The Ben she’d desperately believed could come back, up until an hour ago. Now she didn’t know what she believed.

   A noise from down the hall reminded her that Chewie was probably still nearby and in a panic she grabbed the box, shoving the Chewie doll back inside.  With the Ben doll, unaccountably, she hesitated.  Something about it tugged at her.  She set it aside, and when she was done cleaning that area of the ship smuggled it- appropriate, considering- to the little bundle of things that were hers.  There wasn’t much there, just the two pieces of her lightsaber and a change of clothes, all tied up with her staff, but she still made room for the doll, wedging it away safely out of sight.

   They found refuge on an Outer Rim planet within a few days, settling in to an abandoned warehouse as they tried to coordinate rendezvous with allies that were promising supplies.  Rey practiced with her staff, feeling a little awkward with a respectful but still somewhat unsettling audience.  Her infamy had grown to ridiculous proportions after her battle with Snoke’s guards had become known. She’d told them Ben had assassinated Snoke but no one had seemed too interested.  It made her feel upset on Ben’s part, she didn’t really know why.  He’d tried to wipe the Resistance out right afterwards, he definitely wasn’t up for any special consideration in their eyes.

   She kept the doll.  They traveled again, on a smaller craft since Leia had a separate mission for Chewie and C-3P0 and the Falcon was too recognizable for where they were going anyway. Everyone was asked to pare down their personal belongings only to essentials.  Still, Rey kept the doll.  Sometimes when no one was around and she was assumed to be practicing Super Secret Jedi Stuff she took it out just to look at it.  She thought it would hurt less as time went on but it didn’t.  She hadn’t seen Ben through the Force bond at all and that worried her.  Where was he?  Had he found a way to turn it off?  Was there a way?  She would straighten the mini Luke robe and make sure the mini lightsaber was still attached and sometimes she even tried to- well she didn’t know what, to feel him or reach for him or something- but he was never there.  Only the hum in the back of her mind, the sense of a Presence that wasn’t hers.  But not him.

   They moved again.  Now they were sleeping in a forest, making rude shelters, trying to stay dry in the endless humidity.  The shelters part she was good at, her scavenger origins making her useful, but the humidity made her feel constantly sticky and restless.  She wandered off into the forest trying to clear her head and finally, after weeks, finally, felt the sudden chill down her spine, the strange echoing on the very edges of her hearing that meant the Force bond had activated.

   “Ben?!” she called out, turning in a full circle.  There! Just past the nearest trees on her left, looming in the shadows, staring at her.  

   “Rey?” someone said, not Ben, but Finn, standing behind her in the direction of the camp.  In the moment she looked away to see Finn, then looked back, Ben was gone.  No!  NO, it had been so long, he had been so close!

   “Did you say something just now?” Finn asked, coming towards her, scanning the trees, a hand on his blaster.

   “Um, no, I just thought…” Rey fumbled, looking in every direction.  Nothing.

   “You said Ben,” Finn accused, looking at her with heavy judgment in his eyes.

   “What?”

   “You said Ben, Rey.  Not Kylo, not even Ren.  Ben.”

   “I thought… I thought I saw him,” Rey tried to explain lamely, feeling a little more wounded by his expression than she had any right to be.  Ben was the Enemy, after all.

   “Uh-huh.  And do you want to tell me what this is?” he asked, holding out his hand.  The Ben doll dangled by it’s curly hair, smiling its red smile at her.

   “How did you get that?” Rey demanded, a lurch of fear going through her, and guilt, and anger.  “Did you go through my things?”

   “No, Rey, I moved your things when I was setting down the plate of food you didn’t come to get during dinner.  And all of a sudden this creepy fantasy Kylo Ren falls out of your pack?”

   “It’s  _not_  a creepy fantasy, Chewie had it,” Rey said, holding out her hand.  “And it’s mine now so give it back.”

   “Oh it’s yours now, huh?  Chewie gave it to you, right?” Finn asked, holding the doll farther away from her.

   “Finn,  _give it back_ ,” Rey insisted, feeling another uncomfortable lurch of guilt and doing her best to ignore it.  Chewie would never miss it and anyway, it wasn’t like she was planning on keeping it forever.  Just, just for now, until she figured out why she felt so drawn to it.

   “Rey, you need to pull your head out of the stars.  This  _thing_ ,” he said, shaking the doll by the hair, “isn’t real!  Ben isn’t real, Rey!  He’s gone, alright?  There is no Ben, there’s the First Order and their Supreme Leader, and that’s Kylo Ren!”

   Rey had had enough, more than enough, and she didn’t even know why.  Nothing he was saying wasn’t true but the way he said it, the way he threw it in her face while waving that doll around made her feel a pain and a rage almost like betrayal and instead of trying to grab the doll back from him she reached out with the Force and pushed- and Finn fell backward, dropping the doll automatically as he turned to break his fall- then pulled- and the doll flew to her hand, a little tousled, maybe, but generally unharmed.  She turned it around to make sure the lightsaber was still hanging from it’s belt, shining a little even in the darkness.

   “You’re out of your mind, Rey!” Finn said, back on his feet and enraged.  “He’s not coming, get it?  THERE IS NO BEN SOLO!”

   “Just leave me alone!” Rey screamed back, hugging the doll protectively to her chest.  Finn threw up his hands and stormed away and by the time she got back to the camp he’d moved his things to the shelter farthest from hers.  She still slept with the doll cradled against her stomach, safely hidden by her blanket, afraid that if she left it again it would be in danger.  Not that Finn would actually try to destroy it, she was at least mostly sure, but the vague threat was there now either way.

   It was bad timing for them to have a fight.  The next day Leia took Rey aside for the talk that had been coming since Crait.  She’d found someone who could fix the lightsaber, or so she hoped.  It was another solo mission with Chewie, since he and C-3P0 had returned with fresh supplies just that morning.  She left without getting to make up with Finn and while she felt uncomfortable with it, every time she looked at the doll she got mad all over again.

   The Millennium Falcon felt empty that night as Chewie took his turn in the pilot’s seat and Rey stayed awake in the main living quarters, lying down along one of the bench seats, holding the Kylo doll against her stomach and ignoring the muffled Porg noises from somewhere underneath her.  She hadn’t wanted to blow up at Finn but something about the doll was special to her and she didn’t see what was so threatening about keeping it around.  She held it up in the air above her face, studying it.  Sometimes, with the light robes, it didn’t even look like him.  As she considered it, squinting her eyes so that the robes looked a bit darker, the thought came to her that far more foreign than the outfit was the carefree red smile.

   “I can come back later, if you’re busy,” Ben’s voice said sarcastically, and she sat up at lightspeed, making herself dizzy for a moment.  He was standing at the end of the bench, his head tilted and his expression suspicious as he considered the doll she had reflexively hugged to her chest.

   “How do you do that?” she demanded, shoving the doll behind her.

   “You’ve forgotten how a Force bond works already?” he asked in an automatically mocking tone, circling to the left to see behind her back.  She turned with him stubbornly, blocking his view. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

   “Of you hunting us.”

   “Hunting them.  Not you, you’re just with them.  What is it?”

   “What is what?” she blustered as if she didn’t know.

   “Really?  Okay, what is the thing behind your back that you don’t want me to see?”

   “What thing?”  He just raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms.  “It’s my thing,” she amended stubbornly, crossing her arms back.  “Not yours.  And therefore none of your business.”

   “Huh.  That’s funny, because I vaguely remember something that looked a lot like that thing, but it definitely wasn’t yours.”

   Rey stared at him, pursing her lips in thought.  Clearly the game was up, but she thought she could still turn the tables on him just a little.  “It’s Ben Solo,” she finally said.

   “It’s– what?” he asked, looking taken aback.

   “It’s Ben Solo,” she repeated, using his full name for only the second time ever, pulling the doll out from behind her and holding it up for him to see, facing outwards.  “See?  Here’s the lightsaber you broke.”

   “You broke it too, after trying to steal it from me, after turning me down for no reason at all.  And then you did steal it from me,” he pointed out, regarding her carefully, his expression wary. “You still didn’t say why you have it.”

   “I found it.  It was here, on the Falcon.”

   “I know, but why do YOU have it?”

   “Oh.  Well.  I liked it,” she said honestly, giving him her most winning smile.  He blinked, looking unsettled.  “So I guess I kind of stole it.  No one else wanted it anyway, but I did.”

   “You should throw it away,” he advised her immediately.

   “You say that about everything.”

   “Rey,” he said, sitting wherever he was and leaning towards her, “that doll isn’t real.  Not just because it’s a doll, because it’s not me.  Why are you lying around staring at it?”

   “Look how happy he looks,” Rey pointed out, holding it towards him again.  “Look at that smile.”

   “Rey–.”

   “You know, I’ve never seen you smile,” she said, lowering the doll but still smiling at him.

   “No, I’m fighting a war, not playing hiding games out in the Outer Rim somewhere.”

   “So?  I still smile all the time.”

   He hesitated, staring at her for a moment before dropping his eyes.  They landed on the doll.  “How long have you had that thing?” he asked, clearly trying to divert the conversation.

   “Ben,” she sighed, rolling her eyes at him.

   “It looks dirty, don’t tell me you’ve been dragging it through Rebel bases.  What will your friends think about that?”

   “They think I’m crazy,” she said, looking down, frowning.

   “You have had it with you?” he summarized, eyes widening. “This whole time?”

   “Well, I mean, I guess,” she muttered, and now it was her turn to look away.

   “So you’re out there somewhere sleeping with some threadbare effigy of me dressed up in Luke’s clothes and you can’t even admit for one second that you’d rather be with me than with them?”

   “What?!” she asked, jerking her head back up.  “That’s not what this is about!”

   “Then why do you have it?!”

   “I don’t have to have a reason!” she shouted, on her feet. “And I don’t have to explain myself to you!  Maybe it’s because I still believe it, alright, maybe it’s because I still believe in- in-.”

   “In what, Rey?” he demanded, getting to his feet as well, towering over her in black, blocking out the light.  “In this fantasy Ben you’ve made up for yourself?”

   “That’s not what it is,” she gasped, feeling tears spring to her eyes as Ben echoed exactly the same accusations Finn had been making the night before.  In her arms the Ben doll was crushed against her chest so hard she felt the little lightsaber sharp against her arm.

   “Rey, I’m real,” Ben insisted.  “Me, right here, right now.  Not some stupid toy from a million years ago.  And while you’re playing pretend like I’m some sort of prodigal Jedi son lost in my ways, I’m out here preparing to destroy the Rebellion once and for all!”

   “Ben–.”

   “Don’t ‘Ben’ me,” he snarled.  “You can’t stand letting go.  Your parents, the thing with Luke, the Rebellion, that damn doll!  What are you going to latch onto next, Rey?  What are you going to make up to use as an excuse for what you’re really afraid of?!”

   “It’s not about something I’m afraid of,” Rey insisted, shaking her head, the tears starting to fall.

   “You’re afraid of me, Rey.  Me, this me, here, the one standing in front of you.  You’re afraid of Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, whatever name you use, as.  I.  Am.”

   They were silent for a moment, staring at each other, and Rey could feel the tears falling but Ben’s expression was still cold fury and something else, something worse that was almost like disappointment or even pain.

   “Leave me alone,” Rey finally said, feeling her voice trembling.

   “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Ben said grimly.

   “Then just, I don’t know, sit there and don’t talk, don’t look at me,” she insisted, sitting back down herself and looking away from him.  “I don’t know, read a book or something.”

   “While you cuddle with Ben the Good?”

   “I’m not talking to you,” she said, leaning into the wall, closing her eyes.  “I actually wanted to see you again, can you believe that?  Maybe I really am delusional.”

   “You’re not,” he sighed, and she didn’t need to have her eyes open to sense that he was sitting again, too.  “You just need me, Rey.  I need you too.”  He waited but when she didn’t say anything he added, “And I wanted to see you again, if you’re going to be picky about it.”

   “You did?” she said, looking at him.

   “I did.”

   “Why?”

   “I’m not sure.”  There was a sound from the direction of the pilot’s cabin and they both looked up for a moment.  “What was that?” Ben asked, eyes blindly scanning a landscape he couldn’t see.

   “I think someone’s coming,” she admitted, much as she wished it wasn’t true.  “I was screaming at you a moment ago.”

   “Kind of a shock it took them this long,” he muttered.  “I forgot how terrible Rebel sentries are at their job.”

   “You’ll come back right?” she asked as the sounds got closer.

   “If the bond lets me.  If you get rid of that thing,” he said, glancing down with renewed irritation.  His gaze fixed on her arm.  “You’re bleeding.”

   “Oh, yeah,” she said, looking down.  “The toy lightsaber’s sharp.”  By the time she looked back up again he was gone, and a moment later Chewie came in, a blaster in his paw, looking harried.  “Sorry Chewie, it’s nothing,” Rey said, smiling.  “Just had a bad dream.  And then I cut myself, see?” Chewie came closer, his look not changing much even for a Wookie, and it wasn’t until he was right in front of her that she realized it wasn’t her she was looking at any more.

   “Oh, this?” she said, glancing down at the Ben doll.  It had a little blood on it’s robe from her arm, which she tried to discreetly turn away from the Wookie.  “I found this when I was cleaning.  Sorry.”

   Chewie made a sound that seemed sad, holding out his paw. “Yeah, I felt the same way when I saw it,” Rey admitted, handing it over to him.  “He must have been a cute kid.”  Chewie nodded. “Careful of the lightsaber, it’s sharp.”  He stared at it for a long moment before making another sad sound and leaving, taking the doll with him.

   Rey laid back down, staring up at the ceiling.  Somehow handing the doll over to Chewie didn’t feel so bad, maybe because of what Ben had said, maybe because it had been Chewie’s to begin with. Either way, Ben still got his wish– she fell asleep, not thinking of button eyes but of eyes dark both in color and expression, of black robes and a black saber, leaving the pretend Luke outfit behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Another of the Reylo one-shots I originally posted to tumblr (@how-do-it-turn-this-thing-off) that I am moving here one by one.
> 
> I had to slightly change the prompt to Rey finding a Kylo Bear instead of getting gifted one because I frankly could not imagine what kind of Secret Santa gift exchanges the Resistance would be having that would involve any representation of Kylo Ren on any level. Unless, of course, they were burning it. After that it was very fun to write!


End file.
